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Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets (2010)

de Don Paterson

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'Paterson is simply one of the best living poets in the UK.' Observer
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    101 Sonnets: From Shakespeare to Heaney de Don Paterson (PickledOnion42)
    PickledOnion42: If you enjoy Paterson's unique style of poetic commentary in 'Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets', you can find more of the same applied to a wide range of other poets in '101 Sonnets'.
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Exibindo 5 de 5
Reading a sonnet each week
  Parthurbook | Nov 6, 2023 |
Wow. I'm just not sure how I feel about this one. Well, okay, I love it. And also I have significant issues with it. What, that doesn't clear things up?

Paterson is a Scottish poet and academic in his 50s (yes, that actually is relevant to my discussion here), and is the latest in a long line of commentators on Shakespeare's sonnets. His edition posits itself to be far less stuffy than most of the crucial texts on these poems (and the publishers have jumped on board that notion, as evidenced by the promotion around it, and the book's cover itself) yet at the same time, Paterson is able to bring an equally academic but far more fascinating viewpoint - that of an actual, working poet, rather than the solely intellectual pursuits of many well-known Bardolaters.

I'm going to get most of the negative points out of the way first, lest the review end with a sour taste when I aiming mostly for the sweet. While Paterson's aims are noble, in practice they're at times self-defeating. Yes, he makes references to Kanye West and British soaps, to social media and comparable 21st-century slang, all of which help to illuminate his points. At the same time, it's blatantly clear that this book isn't intended purely for the common reader - and possibly not at all. Sure, the publishers would like to sell as many copies as possible, but this is still an academic text, even if it's done away with many of the trimmings. Fair enough, I don't expect the author to dumb down his knowledge, but when you're casually slipping in terms like "hyperbaton" and other rhetoric tropes, things become a little inside-baseball. Given my own association with the academic field, I don't know what it would actually be like for a layperson to read this book, but I suspect they'd come away from several paragraphs dazed and confused.

What these commentaries read as, more often than not, are lectures or tutorial pieces aimed at tertiary-level poetry and philosophy students. I suspect Paterson would be a brilliant teacher, since he has a keen eye and a beguiling way of relating to people as he explains key concepts. At the same time, he's a man with a vast repository of knowledge, and it becomes clear that this is not quite the "Sonnets for a Common Man" the cover suggests. (I should stress, I have no problem with this volume being academic; it just seems like a jarring disconnect from how it is portrayed on the tin.) If you're approaching this book with little-to-no understanding of Elizabethan poetry and rhetoric, you'll still get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but I'd advise you to be prepared to do some of the groundwork and research yourself.

Now, of course, I realise this is a churlish argument. It's not as if academic poets are being offered five-book deals these days. I value the many key insights this book has passed on to me (see below) and I'm not at all disappointed that Paterson was given this assignment. I just wonder whether this is the publisher getting one over us, or Paterson's initial pitch cheekily getting one over his publisher?

There are occasionally some typographical errors (at least in the edition I purchased), and sometimes Paterson's forays into pop culture references come across as transcribed speech - to the point where if you don't get the reference (which, as a non-Brit much younger than the author, I often did not), the entire paragraph becomes unreadable. Still, as the author points out himself, them's the perils of being contemporary in your work. As he discusses the other lofty tomes on which all Shakespearean commentators must stand, it becomes clear that this is a man who has truly thought about the text he's discussing. None of the big names - Booth, Kerrigan, Duncan-Jones - get off lightly with their transgressions, but they're all clearly idolised for their contributions. Paterson isn't seeking to be a definitive text on the sonnets, but he sure is a useful addition to the great conversation.

The other hesitation I'll save for below. Let's discuss some of the best parts of this book. Well, as I mentioned, Paterson's knowledge is immense. He's funny, rarely pretentious, keen-eyed and innovative with how he resolves cruces (I can't think of any time that I found his allegations completely ridiculous - which is really saying something in this particular sub-genre of scholarship!). The book is also laid out very well, with each sonnet printed alongside its commentary, and key lines repeated where need be. The book eschews a standardised layout, allowing Paterson to analyse one sonnet on a line-by-line basis, the next in relation to previous commentaries, and the next in one paraphrase. Rather than feeling constrained by a formula, he is able to present us with varied insights that build up to being a very useful primer on how the sonnets play into the time they were written, how they have been received in the centuries since, and - most importantly - how understanding the actual process of creating poetry can help us to conclusions that may have been missed by the purebred intellectuals.

Which is really the key point of this book, truth be told. At times, I was frustrated when Paterson only glossed two lines of a given sonnet in depth. But that isn't what this book aims to be. What the author brings to Shakespeare's sonnets is a practicality sadly missing from much commentary. Where other scholars see a deliberately-laid puzzle, Paterson sees a poet trying to put words in the most beautiful order. Where scholars see a compositor's error during printing, Paterson sees a poet simply facing a deadline. Where some see brilliance, he will sometimes call their bluff by deconstructing the poem's composition. It's occasionally iconoclastic, and sometimes willfully pragmatic (and, of course, undoubtedly sometimes wrong), but more often than not I find myself believing him. (For instance, I've spent the last decade being somewhat doubtful about the numerological approaches to the sonnets - Helen Vendler is clearly nuts, but even Duncan-Jones may have just been a scholar fixated on a theory. However, as Paterson outlines his case, there's a construction worker's logic that I almost can't fault. Now, that's impressive.)

I do have one last little quibble, and that is the rather cute conceit that the book was written almost without editing. Paterson chose to read the sonnets whenever he could find the time, in the way that most people would read them, and document his thoughts as he goes. This is admirable, certainly, and fits in with the increasingly blog-like approach to non-fiction books these days; it also helps separate his work from the weightier tomes gathering dust on so many library bookshelves. Yet, it's ultimately distressing: when the author explains he won't investigate a line further because it's "after midnight", or because he's in a bad mood, well that just seems like poor criticism. It's not a dealbreaker, but there were a handful of moments when I was absolutely dismayed by Paterson's relaxed approach; I realise it's his authorial persona and not his true opinion, but nevertheless it does not bode well for the future of popular scholarship. Of course, there's an inverse argument to be made here - what Paterson does over the course of analysing these 154 poems is to, in effect, teach us how to read a poem. Not "read" it in the sense that we can all enjoy Sonnet #18 for being beautiful, or Sonnet #29 for expressing something mundane in a beautiful way. But in the sense that we actually analyse how a poem is put together, searching for the best way of doing it, and tearing down some of our basic assumptions that have led generations of Westerners to appreciate the "gloopy" sonnets (as Paterson calls them) often at the expense of the intelligent and tangled ones.

Still, why am I being so negative? This is a lovely book. Anyone seriously interested in the collection needs to check out the other works Paterson cites (well, maybe not the Vendler), and use your initiative! Yet, this is a worthy starting-point, and certainly a useful addition for those of us more seasoned in the subject matter. Paterson encourages us to see the sonnets as not just museum pieces for "close study" but as the works of a poet engaging in the world. I'm not a poet, although I do write fiction, but this was undoubtedly the book's greatest legacy. It doesn't just teach you how Shakespeare wrote, it sharpens the reader's critical faculties overall. What may look like good poetry might simply be pleasing poetry, Paterson argues - and until we can make that distinction, our ability to engage with the wider artistic world is weakened. (How much of my time writing this review was spent worrying about how my tenors matched my vehicles? So much of it. You'll understand what I mean if you read the book.) ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Don Paterson says in his excellent introduction to his New Commentary that it is impossible to read all the sonnets in one sitting (there are 154). You would certainly need super human powers of concentration to attempt the task and I am not sure the general reader would get much from it as many of them are not easy to read. I read them over a period of a month checking my understanding of them with the commentaries of Katherine Duncan-Jones, Don Paterson and Stephen Booth. I probably read each sonnet 5 or 6 times and at least once out loud, before I moved onto the next one. In many anthologies of English poetry one or two of the sonnets will appear and can be enjoyed as stand alone items. However if you are going to read them all then reading them in the order of publication will enable you to get a feel for the story behind the poems and more importantly there are many instances of sonnets following on from previous ones, so that it is almost like reading a double sonnet.

The 154 sonnets plus A Lovers Complaint were printed in 1609 under the title of SHAKE-SPEARES Sonnets, never before imprinted it says, although this was not quite true as a couple of them had appeared in a 1598 quarto. There are not many clues as to when WS wrote the sonnets and critical analysis has ranged from 1582 to 1609. It would seem that WS himself oversaw the 1609 printed version, probably collecting together and organising them into a form for publication. 1609 was a year when London was again badly hit by the plague and theatres would have been closed.

The first 17 sonnets have been labelled the procreation sonnets. The speaker gives advice to an attractive young man to find himself a wife in order to father children, to keep his family line in existence and to pass on his own marvellous qualities to his children. By the time we reach sonnet 18 the speaker has fallen in love with the young man and the bulk of the collection details the trials and tribulations of that love affair. Sonnet 127 then starts the story of the speakers infatuation with the dark lady. These are misogynistic and bitter in tone and take us to sonnet 152. The last two sonnets are an improvisation on a Greek epigram and serve to lighten the tone if nothing else. Don Paterson claims the sonnets to be:

They are alternately beautiful, maddening, brutally repetitive, enigmatic, sweet, prophetic, pathetic, bathetic, triumphant, trite, wildly original, contorted, screamed, mumbled, plain-speaking, bewildering, offensive, disarming and utterly heartbreaking.

Patersons description as utterly heartbreaking, puts him fairly and squarely into the camp of those critics who think that the speaker in the poems is WS himself and that at least some of the poems are written from personal experience. If this is the case then WS was clearly homosexual or bisexual, which would account for the fact that his sonnet collection was not universally liked following the initial publication. There are examples of analysis where critics tie themselves into knots trying to prove that WS was heterosexual.

Collections of love sonnets were very much in vogue during the 1590's. Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella published in 1591 set the bar high with his 108 sonnets describing a seemingly unrequited affair with a noble lady he referred to as Stella. The collection took inspiration from the Italian Poet Petrarch whose poems worshipped at the altar of his Laura, but Sidney created an atmosphere all of his own without breaking drastically the conventions of love sonneteering. Collections by Samuel Daniel (Delia) Henry Constable (Diana), Thomas Lodge (Philis), Giles Fletcher (Philis) soon followed, but these clung steadfastly to the conventional feel of courtly love poetry and have little interest for the modern reader. Shakespeare after mocking the love sonneteers in his plays then went on to publish his own collection which stood the conventional Petrarchan collection of love poetry on its head. The subjects of his poems were an unnamed man and an unnamed women. Some of the poems to the Young Man (YM) are indeed passionate love poems, with clear indication that there was sexual activity between the two of them. The same applies to the Dark Lady (DL) but here the speaker is cursing his infatuation and accusing her of wilful promiscuity. This is far removed from the respectful courtly love poetry, which also looked to spiritual enlightenment, as practised by most of his contemporaries. Having said that WS stood the Petrarchan conventions on their head: there are still a number of his sonnets that are as conventional as previous collections and address the same themes, but his condensed lines serve to give most of these a new life.

I suppose the bad news to approaching these sonnets is that they have not become easier to read the further we have moved away from the Elizabethan age. Poems written over 425 years ago with all the conventions and context of that era and changes to the language are going to make them harder to understand. The good news is that critical editions similar to the ones reviewed here are available to help the reader through. The hard work of tracking down the references, of pointing out anomalies, of putting the poems in the context of when they were written has all been done. I can imagine someone picking up the sonnets for the first time and looking at sonnet 1

Sonnet 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.


This might put a few people off and most of us will need some help through some contorted syntax. So lets see how our three editors deal with it:

Katherine Duncan-Jones gives a brief summary of the subject of the poem

"The sonnet sets out a eugenic proposition: the most excellent examples of natural beings are under an obligation to reproduce themselves. But the addressee, to whom this rule applies is narcissistically dedicated to self love, allowing his beauty to go to waste by hoarding it up"

She then goes through the poem giving explanations to difficult words and phrases. This along with her general introduction to the sonnets where she explains that the first 17 sonnets are aimed at giving advice to a young man on issues around procreation are enough to get us through the poetry. She will also point out where she thinks that an idea is awkwardly expressed. However her comments are mostly devoid of her opinions and are neutral in most respects. Some readers might find this an advantage.

Don Paterson first reminds us that this is the first of 17 poems which basically say the same thing (he has also covered the idea of procreation in his introduction) and then says this about the subject of the poem;

"The argument here runs something like: ‘We want the lovely things to breed and perpetuate themselves, so that they don’t disappear from the earth. You’re a lovely thing yourself – but alas, you’re also a preening narcissist, and instead of spreading the love, you hoard yourself. Oh – you’re jack-the-lad right now, you’re the one-and-only, you’re gilded youth incarnate, you are; but you’ve sunk your happiness into your own youth [Within thine own bud buriest thy content]. If you don’t have some sympathy for the world, you’ll be remembered as the guy who consumed himself in self-love, and whom the grave ate without the world seeing any return on its investment in you."

He then goes on to give his opinion of the first 17 poems and points out the clever poetical tricks that he sees in this poem and how it adds to the meaning and our enjoyment. A different style and in some ways more informative; if you do not mind the less reverent approach.

Stephen Booth does not tell us anything about the subject of the poem he just gets down to the nitty gritty of analysing the words and phrases and examining the metaphors that WS has used and what these would have communicated to his contemporary readers. It is scholarly work and sometimes taken too extreme I feel.

Katherine Duncan-Jones gives a fulsome introduction which is in keeping with the Arden Shakespeare editions. She covers the history of their printing, surmises on evidence as to when they were written. She also covers the context with pointers to other love sonnet collections. She gives a brief rundown on the structure of sonnets. She also covers their reception through the ages. She points out the fact that much ink has been spilled in identifying the Young Man and the Dark Lady and then proceeds to spill more ink on the subject, but at least she doesn't go into the question of authorship too deeply.

Don Paterson gives us a lively introduction which as well as being informative gives the reader his experiences in tackling a re-reading of the sonnets. He is not afraid to express his opinions on the quality of the poetry and will show how various poetical effects work or don't work. For the more obscure sonnets he will give a line by line interpretation. His glosses on phrases and words are a little perfunctory, but this is not what he is about, his ides is to give the reader some lively information, which will be enough for the reader to enjoy the poem.

Both Katherine Duncan-Jones and Paterson refer to the work done by Stephen Booth and both are not afraid to disagree with him, although Paterson does this more than Duncan-Jones. Booth commentaries take up far more apace than the poems and can go into extraordinary detail. He hardly ever misses a sexual pun or innuendo and Paterson thinks he is a trifle obsessive in this respect. However as both of the other editors refer to Booth, it is handy to be able to have his original commentaries to hand.

Duncan-Jones and Paterson give us the sonnets with modern spelling, Duncan Junes commentaries sit on the page facing the poem while Paterson comment underneath each one. Booth gives us the sonnets first, both in original and modern spelling and his commentaries appear after the collection. The sonnets take up 128 pages and the commentaries 325 pages.

In my opinion Duncan-Jones's Arden edition is probably the go-to edition for facts, context and detail, however the lively enthusiasm and poetical insight of Don Paterson makes for a thrilling experience; to have him whispering in your ear (figuratively speaking), while you get to grips with the poetry. I put post-it notes on my favourite poems and found I had thirty so marked. In a collection of 154 poems there are going to be some you enjoy more than others. I would rate both Duncan-Jones edition and Patersons new commentary as 5 star reads; with the more pedestrian scholarship of Booth a four star read. ( )
2 vote baswood | Feb 11, 2022 |
Interesting, but a little too clever in tone for my taste. ( )
  Siubhan | Feb 28, 2018 |
I'm reading a book on Sanskrit literature at the moment and apparently a sentence in Sanskrit can have two separate meanings - identical words/two meanings. Well i never. You can't quite do that in English but Shakespeare often does his best. In the sonnets, and elsewhere, he sometimes manages to get very close to this. For instance No 3, not one of the great ones, uses "glass" as mirror and window glass but then you realise it can also mean hourglass. This gives the poem an extra dimension of meaning and emotion. Again a phrase like "tillage of thy husbandry" is an agricultural metaphor and also a semi-literal bawdy one as husbandry relates to "husbands" as well as farming. This is apart from any interrelationship between words and phrases. metaphors and topics, in the poems. They are dense, complex, self-referencing, intellectually challenging and great fun. Shakespeare plays with you and teases you. Even his grammar can mislead you if he wants it to. All of this is by way of recommending that if you want to enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets do not read Paterson's book. He disapproves of and probably dislikes wordplay, puns, baroque language, ambiguity, non-'spontaneous experience' genres ... ie he mostly doesn't like the premise on which these poems are built. And of course he has his own biographical theory which some of the sonnets don't quite fit into - so this makes those sonnets inferior. The Sonnets, of course, are poems written in a long tradition of sonnet cycles not an autobiography, journal or novel. Shakespeare plays with the genre and somewhat subverts it. It is possible that the Young Man and Dark Lady never existed or are creations based on different people. We don't know and we will never know and it is not important. They are lyrics, works of highly wrought art not W.S's Diary. However having squeezed Shakespeare into an autobiographical box, Paterson then provides literal rewordings, criticises metaphors for not being precise or literal enough. Want to know which sonnets are "worth" reading and which not - take a quick peep at his first and last paragraphs on the poem. There's no ambiguity in his judgments and he knows what he likes - I suspect it is poems that are very much like his own. Pretty well Cliffs Notes then if you discount the heavy humour which is presumably there to lighten the air as you plough through these poems.
However he is really good on the prosody - sometimes a little quirky but he goes a long way to explaining its importance and power. That said I don't think Paterson really likes the Sonnets very much. If you want to understand/enjoy them try the Oxford World's Classics Poems and Sonnets or Stephen Booth's wonderful if rather huge edition. ( )
  Caomhghin | Jan 29, 2013 |
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Since their first publication in 1609, Shakespeare's Sonnets have appeared in countless editions, and have been translated into every major living language, as well as many minor, dead, synthetic and intergalactic ones, too.
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